'Pretence ends' as minister calls UDA's bluff

The ruling that the Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters and their close allies in mid-Ulster, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, have broken their ceasefires will be greeted by many as the end of a farcical pretence.

In recent months both groups have used the Red Hand Defenders as a cover name for murders they carried out. They have been the organisations to which hardline loyalists most disenchanted with the peace process have gravitated, and both have been linked to drug-dealing and paramilitary racketeering.

The decision by the Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, to call the bluff of the larger of the two organisations is the culmination of RUC investigations. These exposed the UDA/UFF's involvement in more than 200 pipe bomb attacks on Catholic homes in the past year and in last month's drive-by shooting of a Newtownabbey teenager, Gavin Brett, as well as several other murders.

The move against the LVF is a consequence of the police investigation into the murder of the journalist Martin O'Hagan in Lurgan last month. Evidence emerged suggesting the weapon used was linked to a previous LVF shooting.

The two paramilitary groups have very different roots. The UDA, formed in 1971 as an umbrella for loyalist vigilante groups in Belfast and Lisburn, had perhaps 40,000 members in its early years and played a major role in the 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike, which brought down the fledgling power-sharing government.

But while it can currently draw on around 10,000 members, there are only several hundred active in paramilitary operations, usually adopting the UFF cover name. The UDA/UFF has six brigades - north, south, east and west Belfast; south-east Antrim, and north Antrim/Londonderry - each with a brigadier who is a member of the ruling inner council.

In theory, the inner council takes overall policy decisions, but in practice each brigadier has near-autonomy for his area.

It took a more political path in the mid-1980s but swung back to paramilitarism after the IRA murdered its leader, John McMichael, in 1987. The security forces made inroads into the organisation and the Stevens inquiry led to the arrest of Brian Nelson, a UDA/army double agent, jailed in 1992 for conspiracy to murder five Catholics. This forced a shake-up and a renewed period of violence, with the UFF carrying out some of the most savage atrocities of the past 30 years, including the 1993 Greysteel and 1992 Ormeau Road betting shop massacres.

Its support for the peace process was seen as a crucial counter-balance to IRA backing, and it joined the Ulster Volunteer Force in declaring a ceasefire in October 1994. This broke down in January 1998, when the UFF shot dead three people after the murder of Billy Wright, the founder of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, in the Maze prison. It was later restored.

It was soon clear, however, that disenchantment with what they saw as a stream of concessions to republicans was growing and that UDA/UFF members were turning back to sectarian violence and turf wars with other loyalists.

The UDA/UFF was involved last summer in a vicious feud with the Ulster Volunteer Force which left seven men dead. Johnny Adair, the only person ever jailed for directing terrorism in Northern Ireland, and freed early under the Good Friday agreement, was re-imprisoned for his part in the trouble.

The political wing, the Ulster Democratic party, failed to gain any seats in the Stormont assembly. The organisation withdrew its backing for the peace accord in July although it insisted its ceasefire was intact.

The LVF, a smaller faction, emerged from hardline Ulster Volunteer Force units in mid-Ulster. Founded by Wright, a Portadown based gunman dubbed King Rat, the LVF was established as a separate force in 1996.

The organisation's first victim was a Catholic taxi driver, Michael McGoldrick, who was murdered near Lurgan. It has been responsible for many killings, including the car bomb murder of a Lurgan solicitor, Rosemary Nelson.